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Mexico’s Immigration Dilemma

May 5th, 2010

Immigration, the world over, causes no end of unjustified hysteria and problems. Our politicians and newspapers in the UK love to take a swipe at immigrants every time they need someone to blame or just to give a good kick.

Many people in the West do not realise that it is not only ‘Western’ or ‘rich’ counties that have problems with immigration but so do second world and indeed third world counties. Kenya has to deal with Somalian refugees and South Africa have had to deal with the increasing tide of illegal and very hungry Zimbabweans. Tanzania, however, has taken the bold decision to offer citizenship to 162,000 Burundian refugees who fled their country in 1972 and who have since been living in Tanzania.

This does lead to crazy situations where some of your citizens are a problem for another country whilst at home you have to deal with citizens of another country. Take Mexico for example. The president of Mexico has condemned Arizona’s new immigration law. The law will require Arizona police to question people about their immigration status if they suspect they are there illegally. (via BBC News - Mexico leader attacks Arizonas new immigration law.) For the president, the law specifically targets his citizens.

On the other hand, Amnesty International has warned that migrants in Mexico are facing a "major human rights crisis" as the authorities fail to tackle widespread abuses where officials ignore or even played a part in the rape, kidnap, and murder of migrants (via BBC News - Mexico migrants face human rights crisis, says Amnesty).

Crazy world, isn’t it?

[First published on my NotTheNews blog on specified date]